04/23/24
February 13, 2010
Wizards and Mavericks agree to multiple-player trade involving Caron Butler & Josh Howard: The Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks have swapped Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson for Josh Howard, Drew Gooden and two other players.
posted by tommytrump to basketball at 07:53 PM - 3 comments
Reaction from some Mavs-centric blogs:
...but Haywood is a legitimate game-changer at center. He's one of the most physical defenders at the position in the entire league, and an offensive superior to Erick Dampier. Dwight Howard ranked Haywood as the third best defender in the league, and an in-depth look at Haywood's D over at Bullets Forever only tells us more of the same; the Mavs are adding a center that instantly upgrades their interior defense and rebounding, two things he was able to do in Washington despite some truly miserable circumstances.
We know that all along, in the teams' conversations, Haywood was as important a Mavs get as Butler was. Haywood is in the last year of a deal that pays him $6 million. This summer, Dallas will have his Bird Rights meaning he's likely going nowhere. The Mavs plan on re-signing him and making him the full-time center for the long-term future and while they do that with one center, they dangle The DUST Chip with the other. (Haywood's presence means a sign-and-trade involving Damp won't require a center coming back. ... and of course, the way we've discussed it from the start is that a traded-and-then-cut Damp would end up boomeranging back here anyway.) Meanwhile, Butler is expiring after next season. So this summer, he's a chip, too -- if necessary, a sidebar to DUST. (And when Dallas brass says, "trustable assets,'' they mean Butler in comparison to Josh, a difficult-to-gauge "asset'' this summer. The Mavs showed themselves to be in "go-for-it'' mode but the go-for-it is now AND for later.
posted by Ufez Jones at 12:01 PM on February 14, 2010
Nice trade for the Mavs, there's not much of a downside here. I didn't think that they could get Haywood in the deal, it feels like they are taking Washington's lunch money.
It must be awful to be a Wizards fan right now. How can you be even remotely happy about this trade? Yeah, you open up cap space, but for what? I guess they could get something better than Butler and Haywood with that space but I can't imagine many top level free agents are going to want to join that team right now.
posted by tron7 at 06:53 PM on February 14, 2010
No surprises here. This trade has been going back and forth all week. I'm sad to see J-Ho leave, but it really was time, on several levels. If Carlisle wants to keep JET coming off of the bench, this solves the starting lineup quandry of lacking a true 2-guard.
Kidd, Butler, Marion, Dirk & Damp/Haywood seems like a much more natural starting 5 rather than trying to squeeze three Forwards into two slots while starting a C and some spare SG. I'm not convinced keeping Roddy Beaubois was as important as Cuban seemed to think, but obviously that wasn't a sticking point.
I'm having a hard time finding much wrong with this, at least from a Mavs point of view.